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Hello Reader,

🧭 Where in the World?

After five busy days each in Menorca and Mallorca, Spain, Kris is sifting through photos and notes to write up stories about both. (In the meantime, you can see snippets on Facebook and Instagram @TravelPast50.)

Mallorca is bigger, mountainous, a bit warmer than Menorca, which is green and rocky and more rural, and just one-fifth the size of Mallorca with only one-tenth the population.

Outside of the primary port city of Palma, Mallorca highlights include the Tramuntada mountain range with its spectacular cliffs falling to the sea, its lovely villages, and its many old fincas (country estates) turned, in many cases, to fine hotels, restaurants, inns, and event centers.

Tens of thousands of bicyclists work their way through the Mallorca mountains each year, while others find their way to the broad beach in Pollensa, or any number of small ports filled with pleasure and fishing boats and the occasional yacht.

Kris was duly impressed having a dockside lunch one day across the bay from Rafa Nadal’s house. She dove in to try a water/foil e-bike with Salty Cycling, and regrets not purchasing the fine hand-dyed and woven linens of Vicens Textiles. Sounds like a return trip with Tom is in order. More on Menorca and the Balearic Islands in general to follow!

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Tom is just back from Amsterdam, where he had a less strenuous trip than Kris, although he did do an awful lot of walking. He used the Dutch Museum Card, which is a deal at €75 and gets you into about 400 Dutch museums all over the country.

Speaking of all over the country, it's very easy to get around the Netherlands on their trains, and that means day trips to cities such as The Hague to visit the Mauritshuis Museum to see Vermeer's famous Girl With the Pearl Earring, and the precious Goldfinch by Carel Fabritius, which inspired the great novel The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt.

🗞️ Travel News From Around the Web

• We’re always interested in learning more about the destinations we visit. That goes for places like Rome and Florence which we’ve visited often. Maybe it’s especially true of places we think we know, that we want to stay updated. So in preparation for an October trip to Italy, we are dusting off our UNESCO World Heritage Sites of Italy post. We’ve booked small group tours both in Rome and Italy with Context Travel. (We’re meeting a half dozen friends there, some veteran visitors and some first timers to Italy.) Not only will we get fresh information, but we’ll be pre-ticketed with timed entries to the busiest sites. We’re also fans of Context Talks, inexpensive video presentations by experts. No matter if you’ve booked a tour with Context or not, you can watch one (or more!) of their videos to get you primed for your travels. Each video has a preview of a couple minutes to help you decide which topic you want. Looking at Venice options, for example, we found presentations about history, about food, and about this year’s Venice Art Biennial. We’re psyched.
• Has climate change affected your travel plans? Here are a few trends beginning to emerge, including "polarizing" your travel, i.e. traveling further north – or south – to avoid excessive heat. Good news for the tourism business in Scandinavia and the UK, we're told.
• And, it's never too often to remind you how to keep your valuables safe while traveling. Take it from us, who have been the victims of expert pickpockets more than once, it pays to pay attention to what you're doing, and to take steps to secure your stuff. Kris has recently started carrying the Pacsafe anti theft convertible purse and backpack, which you can read about here.

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💸 This Week's Best Deals in Travel

• The Apple AirTags are still on sale at Amazon. These are, for us at least, the very easiest way to get some peace of mind, especially if you're checking your luggage. They work worldwide and keep track of your bags, or whatever else you attach them to, by sending their location to your iPhone.
• Point.me has named Flying Blue, the points program of Air France and KLM, as the best airline points program. And to celebrate, they're running a contest to give away 1 million Flying Blue miles. That's a lot of flying. Sign up. It's free.
• Google has posted a tutorial story on how to best use their tools such as Google Flights and Google Maps to find the best deals in travel.

✈️ Points and Miles News

All of the Delta branded American Express cards have increased their welcome offers. They range from 80,000 Delta miles to 100,000 miles, depending on the card. Delta has a sometimes laughable reputation in the miles and points world but 80,000 miles can actually get you far (like Tokyo or up to eight domestic flights.) As a matter of fact, Tom flew round trip to Amsterdam for 70,000 Delta miles. Check out the offers for yourself here.

Be sure to read our story on how to get the best points and miles credit card for you.

📖 What We're Reading

Kris's current reading was inspired by this highly recommended article from the New Yorker, "The Oscars for the Deep State," by Casey Cep, published in the September 17, 2024, issue. It will renew your faith in civil servants. That led her to Michael Lewis’ book, The Fifth Risk, which explores the internal workings of the Department of Energy and specifically the transition to the Trump administration in 2017. Yeow. The book will, well, either make you vote or pray, or both.

Tom is currently reading James, by Percival Everett, a retelling of Huckleberry Finn from the point of view of a surprisingly literate Jim, Huck's friend. It's a gentle segue from Timothy Egan's A Fever in the Heartland about the rise of the Ku Klux Klan in Middle America in the first half of the 20th Century, which he just finished.

❝Travel Quote of the Week❞

The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page. – Saint Augustine of Hippo

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Happy travels,

Kris and Tom

​ Tom Bartel and Kristin Henning ​Travel Past 50​ ​ Connect with us: Facebook, Threads, Instagram, ​ Join our Facebook community.

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